_Sit down_, _and hear the last of our sea-sorrow_.
"THE TEMPEST."
_They said_, "_and why should this thing be_?
_What danger lowers by land or sea_?
_They ring the tune of Enderby_."
JEAN INGELOW.
"England, when she goes to war," said a Prime Minister not long ago, "has
not to consider whether she will be able to fight a second or a third
campaign." We remembered that we were Englishmen; and on January 19th,
1877, went down again with a good courage for our third campaign on the
Welsh coast. A furious gale was howling that day among the hills of
Cardiganshire, recalling to the memory of some of us the stormy Ides of
March, when the pioneers of our little army first set foot in Borth.
_Omina principiis inesse solent_. This gale was sounding the key-note
of the term's adventures.
The cause of our return to Borth for a third term is briefly told. We
had gone home at Christmas, uncertain whether we should meet again there
or at Uppingham. Dr. Acland, of Oxford, to whose active sympathy with
the school in its perplexities we must at least gratefully allude, had
undertaken on our behalf to inspect the sanitary condition of Uppingham,
and give us his judgment on the expediency of reassembling there. His
judgment was submitted to the attention of the Trustees at their meeting,
on December 22nd, when it was resolved that, "In the face of Dr. Acland's
report, the Trustees deeply regret they cannot at present recall the
school to Uppingham." So we went back to the sea.
Our numbers this term just missed by one the normal total of three
hundred. In the two preceding terms they had been smaller by some five
or six. The camp at Borth, therefore, had not suffered from want of
recruits. Indeed, it was now foreseen that the return to Uppingham would
be for about one-third of the school a first arrival there.
The beginning of the end of our exile seemed to be marked by the reduced
number of masters' families in camp. Some had gone into winter quarters
at Aberystwith; some had already resettled at Uppingham. Our connection
with home began to be retightened also by parochial and other common
transactions, in which we took our share from a distance. Not, indeed,
that the connection had ever been discontinued. We had left too precious
pledges behind us. The deserted gardens did not waste all their
sweetness on the air which we had exchanged for a "fresher clime." A
thin intermittent stream of their products found its way along the nine
hours of railway through most of the year. Flowers, fruit, and
vegetables might raise tantalising memories of the pleasant places where
they grew, but were not the less welcome to dwellers in this somewhat
austere tract where they did not grow or grew very niggardly. The
traffic in these delicacies drew the attention of the London and North-
Western Railway Company, whose officials called to account one of our
servants for travelling with an excess of personal luggage. The artless
contrabandist, besides his own modest pack, had fourteen several hampers
and boxes under his charge. This was checked. But who was the miscreant
who systematically staved in and pounded into such odd shapes the little
tin boxes in which our rose-fanciers had their choice blooms sent them by
post? Post Office authorities thought the damage was caused by "the
pressure of the letters." We did not, and remonstrated, till the
practice, whoever was the criminal, was stopped. Besides these gracious
souvenirs of home, there were from time to time business matters which we
had to transact as parishioners and ratepayers. One was sensible of an
almost humorous contrast, when we discussed our interests in the Midlands
in a room overlooking the coast and hills of Cardiganshire, where one
turned from watching the waves breaking crisply on the beach, to study a
map of some property in Rutland pastures. It has been accounted a signal
proof of Roman self-confidence, that bidders could be found for a piece
of land on which Hannibal was encamped at the moment of sale. The
situations are not quite parallel. But people who could seriously
debate, as we did, on the purchase of a freehold at a time when not even
their Rome was their own, clearly had not despaired of their country.
With the exception of the moving incidents to be immediately narrated,
the tale of this term's life differs little from that of the preceding.
The round of work and play was much the same; the harriers were out
again, football went on as before, till superseded by the "athletics,"
and a match was played on March 7th against Shrewsbury School on their
ground, of which the result was a drawn battle.
Our difficulties this term were with the elements. In novels of school
life, where the scene is laid on the coast, the hero always imperils his
bones in an escapade upon the cliffs. The heroes of our romance knew
what was expected of them. Accordingly, two new boys of a week's
standing start one afternoon for a ramble on Borth Head and are missing
at tea-time. Search parties are organised at once (it was not the first
occasion, for the writer remembers sharing in a wild-goose chase which
lasted four hours of the night, along and under the same cliffs); while
one skirted the marsh to Taliesin, another explored the coast. The
latter party at nine o'clock in the evening discovered the involuntary
tenants perched upon a rock a little way up the cliff. They had climbed
to it to escape the tide which had cut them off, and here they sat,
telling stones in turn, they said, to while away the time till the tide
should retire. Before the waters went, however, darkness came; and
either from fear of breaking bones in the descent or suspicion of some
fresh treachery in the mysterious sea, they clung to their perch,
blessing the mildness of a January night without wind or frost, but
blessing with still more fervency the lanterns of their rescuers. They
had passed five hours in this anxious situation.
This was the sportive prelude of more serious trouble. _Nunquam
imprudentibus imber incidit_: as the servant perhaps reflected, who, on
Monday, January 29th, was conveying the dinner of his master's family
from the Hotel kitchen to Cambrian Terrace. As he crossed the gusty
street between them, the harpies of the storm swept the dinner from dish,
and rolled a prime joint over and over in the dust. A leg of mutton was
following, but he caught it dexterously by the knuckle-end as it fell,
and rescued so much from the wreck. Such incidents are significant:
trifles light as air, no doubt, but at least they showed which way the
wind blew. And did it not blow? for three days the sou'-wester had been
heaping up the sea-water against the shores of Cardigan Bay. People
remembered with misgivings that an expected high tide coincided in time
with the gale, and shook their heads significantly as they went to bed on
the eve of January 30th.
In the half light before sunrise, the classes, emerging from the school-
room after morning prayers, found the street between them and the Terrace
threaded by a stream of salt water, which was pouring over the sea-wall
in momently increasing volume. Skirting or jumping the obstruction they
reached the class-rooms, and work began. But before morning school was
over the stream had become a river, and thrifty housewives were keeping
out the flood from their ground-floors by impromptu dams. Those who were
well placed saw a memorable sight that morn, as the terrible white
rollers came remorselessly in, sheeting the black cliff sides in the
distance with columns of spouted foam, then thundering on the low sea-
wall, licking up or battening down the stakes of its palisades, and
scattering apart and volleying before it the pebbles built in between
them, till the village street was heaped with the ruins of the barrier
over which the waters swept victoriously into the level plain beyond:
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.
Those who were looking inland saw how
Along the river's bed
A mighty eygre reared its head
And up the Lery raging sped.
And though they could not see how the tenants of the low-lying hamlet of
Ynislas fled to their upper storey as the tide plunged them into twelve
feet of water; how it breached the railway beyond, sapping four miles of
embankment, and sweeping the bodies of a drowned flock of sheep far
inland to the very foot of the hills; yet they saw enough to make them
recall the grim memories of the historic shore, and doubt if our fortunes
were not about to add a chapter to the legend of the Lost Lowland
Hundred.
For an hour the narrow ridge on which the village stands was swept by a
storm of foam, while, from moment to moment, a wave exploding against the
crest of the ridge, would leap in through the intervals between the
houses, and carrying along a drift of sea-weed and shingle, splintered
timber, and wrecked peat-stacks, go eddying down into the drowned
pastures beyond. Yet when the ebb came, and men began to count their
losses, there were but few to record. The embankment at the south end of
the village had been beaten flat, and the road behind it buried under a
silt of shingle; the nearest houses to it had been flooded and threatened
with collapse, so that the owners were offering them next day on easy
terms; from our hospital, which stood in this quarter, the one patient
and his nurse were rescued on the backs of waders; the foundations of a
chapel, which was building on lower ground, were reported sapped, and a
staunch Churchman of our Welsh acquaintance stood rapturously contrasting
the fate of the conventicle with the security of his own place of worship
on the neighbouring knoll. "If Borth goes, the church won't, anyhow!" he
cried, in self-forgetting fervour. No lives were lost, though several
were barely saved. One of our party rescued his dog, already straining
at his chain to escape a watery grave; another saved (dearer than life
itself) his favourite violin. A fisherman, surprised in his kitchen, was
flung down and nearly strangled between door and doorpost by the rush of
a wave through the window. A neighbour was drifted out of his house on
the top of one wave, and scrambled back to find the door slammed and held
against him by another. Rueful groups of women stood in the street,
sobbing over armfuls of what one feared might be drowned infants, but
were, in fact, the little pigs which they had plucked alive and
remonstrant from the flooded styes. In short, if many were frightened,
few could plead to being hurt.
Meanwhile, the boys had found their way from the class-rooms upon bridges
of railway-sleepers requisitioned from the station-yard. We could not
but enjoy that "something not altogether unpleasing to us in the
calamities of our neighbours," but the "humorous ruth," with which we
contemplated the comical incidents of the disaster was exchanged in good
time for practical pity. There was to be another high tide that evening,
and how would the village stand this second storm of its broken defences?
So the order was given to assemble in the street after dinner, and work
at the repair of the breaches. The street looked like an ant-hill, as
the workers, divided into gangs by houses, with the housemaster at the
head of his gang, swarmed on the roadway, clearing it from the _debris_
with pickaxe, spade, and a multitude of hands; re-stacking the cottagers'
store of peat-sods, which the waves had sown broadcast; forming chains
across the beach to pass up from hand to hand the large pebbles at low-
water mark, to build in between the palisades; or cutting down the old
stakes and driving in new ones. This last was the most attractive branch
of the service. How enviable was he whom a reputation as a woodman
secured the enjoyment of an axe, and the genial employ of hewing and
hammering! This was much to be preferred to cutting your hands in moving
rubbish or standing still to hand wet stones in a freezing wind. However,
the pleasure of helping other people was common to all; and many of the
young hearts, which tasted that pleasure in this rough day's labour, will
have gained an impulse of prompt helpfulness that may serve them in other
and ruder storms than that which shook the frail homes of these friendly
villagers.
We do not know how our defences would have stood the test of battle. They
were not put to the proof, for the wind, veering to the north that
morning, and blowing strongly all day, reduced again the volume of the
water in the bay, and the following tides came and went harmlessly. But
had the morrow repeated the terrors of this day, we should hardly have
been up to witness them, for (_proh pudor_!) we rewarded ourselves for
our exertions by a lie-a-bed next morning in place of early school.
Elsewhere the storm-wave had worked more havoc. At Ynyslas, a flock of
one hundred and fifteen sheep were caught in their pastures, and drowned,
the farmer rescuing only eleven. The cottagers were driven to their
lofts, while the tide snatched away their furniture, doors,
window-frames, and tables, and strewed them along the railway banks.
There was flotsam and jetsam on what was now once more the coast-line at
the village of Taliesin, where in old days the bard's cradle had been
washed ashore; here one poor woman recovered her parlour-table of heavy
oak; her chairs had travelled farther yet to the door of a farmhouse in
the extreme corner of the marsh. These people were greater sufferers
than our villagers, but we could only help them by a subscription to
replace their losses.
For ourselves, we suffered nothing except a temporary scarcity of coals
and oil from the interruption of the railway traffic. It was a fortnight
before the next train ran on the stretch between us and Machynlleth, and
in the meanwhile the gap was bridged by a coach service. From four miles
of embankment the ballast had been sapped away, and the sleepers and
rails collapsing into the void presented a dismal picture of wreck.
Yes, we suffered one other privation. It was long before our football-
field rose again from the deeps, and was dry enough for play. Its
goalposts pricking up mournfully through the floods were a landmark which
the boys recognised with rueful eyes in the midst of the drowned and
deformed landscape.
More substantial measures than the patching up of the barricades in which
we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll
of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression
which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older residents
remember a coach-road under the promontory, where now there is nothing
but rock and seaweed, and look forward gloomily to a day when Borth will
be "disturbed;" for so they euphemistically describe the catastrophe
which is finally to wash it away. But an acquaintance of ours, who
claims one of the longest memories in the place, is more confident. He
has known Borth seventy years and as he has never seen it destroyed
during all that time, does not think it will be now. His own house is
safe on the hill of Old Borth, so he judges with all the calm of
conscious security. His conviction, however, is not shared by his
townsfolk, who were soon busy holding meetings, and considering schemes
for the provision of something better than these moral guarantees.
Heartily do we hope that funds and measures will be found to save our
friends from another and more calamitous "disturbance." But a letter
from Borth, a year later, speaks of the sea as again threatening their
security. "We are not afraid of him, though," the correspondent, one of
our landladies, devoutly adds, "for he is under a Master." All the same,
we should like to hear of a stout sea-wall as well.
Once again the elements caused us alarm. A heavy gale got up in the
evening of February 19th, and roared all night upon the roof of the
hotel, tearing up the fluttering tiles in patches, and sending them
adrift through the air, till the master who slept under the leads, in
charge of the top storey, began to doubt whether the straining roof would
last overhead till morning. It was small consolation that this time he
and his neighbours should at least "die a dry death," so the inmates of
the floor were summoned from their beds in the small hours to spend the
rest of the night in a bivouack on the ground-floor. One or another of
those luckless youngsters will, in after days, remember, as a cheerful
incident, the arrival on the scene of the Headmaster, with a store of
biscuits and such supplies as could be requisitioned at the moment, to
provision the watch. Your schoolboy, he reflected, is hungry at all
times; what must he be at night when dragged from bed to save his life,
and forced to sit up, rather cold and very empty, for several hours
before daybreak. Solaced, however, by these beguilements, the hours
passed cheerfully away.